MLK Jr.’s daughter says it’s ‘insulting’ GOP uses fathers words to fight critical race theory
Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., hit back at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for using a quote from the late civil rights leader to make a case against critical race theory.
“Critical race theory goes against everything Martin Luther King has ever told us, ‘Don’t judge us by the color of our skin,’ and now they’re embracing it,” McCarthy said in an interview Monday.
Bernice King took issue with Republicans using her father’s words to fight critical race theory, a Marxist ideology that claims America is inherently racist and teaches students to see others through the lens of a person’s race before all else.
“Do not take excerpts from my father. Study him holistically,” she said during an appearance on MSNBC on Wednesday. “There is a lot he wrote extensively. That’s the beauty of all of this. No matter what people try to say, there are books out.”
“You will not misappropriate my father this way…I’m one of those four children,” she said, referring to her siblings, while adding, “I thank God that he was able to write like this because for people to be able to misappropriate him this way is actually beyond insulting.”
“Daddy would never say excuse the history, and let’s just start here,” she continued. “He also said, if a nation has done something against the people for hundreds of years, then it must also turn around and do something for those people,” she added.
Critical race theory has its roots in the Frankfurt School, where a manifesto was created in 1937 that drew influence from Friedrich Nietzche, Georg Friedrich Hegel, and Karl Marx. One of the core tenets of the school of thought was to tear down Western institutions. It claimed that “traditional theory fetishized knowledge, seeing truth as empirical and universal,” according to a report by the Heritage Foundation.